"Unless charter enthusiasts can escape deep-seated structural
constraints, these independent schools may reproduce stratified layers
of student performance, just like garden-variety public schools," warns
the report by researchers with Policy Analysis for California
Education.

"On the other hand," it says, "if charter educators can deliver on
their promises of spirited community and effectiveness, they may raise
children's learning curves."

Researchers from PACE, a collaborative effort between the University
of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, analyzed data
gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau and compared it with similar data
for 84,000 regular public schools. The Census Bureau surveyed
principals from 870 charter schools and 2,847 teachers in those schools
during the 1999-2000 school year for the National Center for
Educational Statistics.

Since 1991, more than 2,600 charter schools have been formed across
the nation, enrolling about 700,000 students in 36 states and the
District of Columbia, the report notes. Though charter schools operate
with public funding, they are independent of local school boards and do
not have to follow most education regulations.

The researchers found that charter school educators are failing to
acquire federal money to assist students from low-income families, that
many teachers in charter schools do not have full credentials, and that
quality differs among types of charter schools.

In most cases, the study found, charter school operators are not
tapping in to federal money available to help educate disadvantaged
children.

Although 43 percent of the children in charter schools are eligible
for free or reduced-price lunches, fewer than 5 percent are helped by
federal programs—most notably Title I—for which they would
qualify.

Defeating Purpose?

In an interview, Bruce Fuller, the director of the study and a
professor of education and public policy at UC-Berkeley, suggested
possible reasons charter schools are not seeking federal Title I aid.
Their principals may be overwhelmed with the "day-to-day hassles" of
running the charter schools, for instance, and may be wary of
monitoring or regulation by the federal government.

Many black and Latino students, in particular, are flocking to
charter schools because they provide a stronger sense of community and
identity for members of minority groups, the report says.

In many cases, Mr. Fuller argued, children from low-income families
would have been better off if they had stayed in regular public
schools. Though students may learn better in a charter school where
they feel more accepted, he said, charter schools defeat their own
purpose when they don't have resources equal to those of regular
schools.

"There's no question that charter schools do offer hope to hundreds
of thousands of families," he said. "These parents are concerned about
mediocre neighborhood schools."

Charter school proponents disputed the report's conclusions, saying
that it reveals no new facts, and that charter schools and regular
public schools can't be compared because they have different
educational strategies.

"If I read that charters schools were doing the same things [as
regular schools], I would have to argue why do you need charter
schools," said Marc Dean Millot, the president and chief executive
officer of the Washington-based National Charter School Alliance.

Charter schools "take public education out of the hands of very
large bureaucracies and move more and more of that power down to an
informed citizenry," Mr. Millot said.

Many parents of minority students are willing to sacrifice the
resources of regular schools in order to pursue the benefits of school
choice, Mr. Millot said.

Charter schools, in general, rely heavily on teachers who do not
have full credentials, but that appears especially to be the case in
predominantly black charter schools, the report says.

Charter schools have a harder time attracting teachers than do
regular public schools because of lower pay and the dual roles teachers
must play, Mr. Fuller said. In the typical charter school, about 48
percent of teachers do not have teaching licenses, compared with only 9
percent in regular schools. In predominantly black charter schools, the
number of teachers without full licenses rises to almost 60
percent.

Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of the sociology of education Teachers
College, Columbia University, who has studied charter schools, said the
report's findings were not new, and she chided charter school advocates
for not heeding such findings.

"A lot of this stuff came out in state-level reports," Ms. Wells
said. "The proponents of charter schools are not listening. This report
shows that charter schools are in some way exacerbating the
inequalities that already exist in public schools. This reform has done
nothing to equalize education."

But proponents say the small size of most charter schools allows
principals the flexibility of looking beyond a piece of paper when
hiring teachers.

"They're not trying to develop a one-size-fits-all approach," Mr.
Millot said of the independent public schools. Such uniformity
"undermines what we think is a very important quality of our society,
and that is our right to choose."

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